Pantheism does not claim that its divine Unity is a "perfect being" or being at all (generally), or that it is omniscient etc. Surely it is mistaken to interpret Spinoza's "God" as "perfect" and "omniscient" etc. in anything like the way these predicates are interpreted theistically as applying to God.

Pantheism may, in a sense, deny the existence of any properties that are not "natural." It depends on how much one is willing to broaden one's notion of "natural." Of course, classifications such as "objectivist" and "nonnaturalist," are only a partial explanation of pantheists' ethical views.

Pantheism should be of interest to those in the philosophy of religion who seek a way out of the constrictions (often institutional ones) put upon them by working within the confines of classical theism; especially as the issues relating to classical theism have been taken up by the contemporary christian conservative analytic philosophers of religion.

Classicalpantheism equates existence with God without attempting to redefine or to minimize either term, and has an inclusive demeanor towards other world faiths.

It is a classical concept that is represented by many religious traditions including Hinduism and by Kabbalistic Judaism, amongst many other world religions and philosophies.

In many ways, classicalpantheism is similar to monism, in that it views all things, from energy to matter to thought or time as being aspects of an all embracing personal God.

en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Classical_pantheism (135 words)

Naturalistic Pantheism(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-07)

Naturalistic Pantheism is a form of Pantheism which holds that the universe, although unconscious and non-sentient as a whole, is a meaningful focus for human spirituality.

Opponents of naturalistic pantheism allege that it constitutes an intentional misuse of terminology, and an attempt to justify atheism by mislabeling it as pantheism.

General acceptance of naturalistic pantheism has been undermined to some extent by the existence of considerable disagreement within their community as to whether or not ideas such as "spirituality" are truly applicable to a naturalistic worldview.

Pantheism revels in the beauty of nature and the night sky, and is full of wonder at their mystery and power.

Pantheism has shown up in a number of different varieties, ranging from the simple reverence of the physical universe and nature just as they are, through beliefs in vast cosmic souls, to versions that believe that everything we see is only an illusion concealing a perfect mental unity.

Pantheism has an ecological approach to ethics which is concerned not only with the individual organism or the individual species, but also with the whole community of living and non-living things in which they thrive.

www.pantheism.net /elements/elemental.txt (23900 words)

Learn more about Pantheism in the online encyclopedia.(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-07)

Pantheism is often attacked as tautology by atheists, since it appears to many of them to do little more than re-define the word 'God' to mean 'world' or 'universe'.

Some (classicalpantheism) believe in a personal, conscious, and omniscient deity, and see this deity as uniting all true religions.

Others, some being within (Naturalistic Pantheism) believe in a unconscious, non-sentient universe, which while being holy and beautiful, is only seen as being a God in an extremely non-traditional impersonal sense.

Pantheism is against reason and experience, and on these grounds we assert that it is to be rejected.

Pantheism holds that the universe is God either entirely or partly or as the ideal state to which the world is evolving.

This is evident from classical realistic cosmology which shows that the corporeal universe is accidentally and substantially mutable, that the universe is not infinite, and that it is composed of mobile beings which are specifically and numerically many.

Pantheism is often considered to be tautology by atheists, since it appears to many of them to do little more than re-define the word "God" to mean "world" or "universe." However, there is no significant agreement that making "God" synonymous with "universe" must necessarily make either term any less meaningful.

Classicalpantheism believes in a personal, conscious, and omniscient deity, and see this deity as uniting all true religions.

Others, such as Naturalistic Pantheism, believe in an unconscious, non-sentient universe, which, while being holy and beautiful, is seen as being a God in a non-traditional and impersonal sense.

More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence and/or the universe (the sum total of all that is was and shall be) is personified in the 'theological principle' of 'God'.

Finally, some in the United States (see Cosmotheism) have brought in the idea of a hierarchical religious community and worldview, as well as the controversial opinions of Dr. William Pierce.

On the other hand, pantheism fails to grasp the aspect of God which is absolute in the sense that some of his attributes are not influenced by, or independent of, all other creatures, for example, his power and his goodness.

On the other hand, pantheism may be assumed to parallel a paradigm that derived ultimately from the optical writings of Young and Fresnel in the early 19th century which taught that light was transverse wave motion.

Unlike the classical theist, Hartshorne holds that God is not outside reality since God as social includes the world which has reciprocal interaction with him, but simultaneously, unlike the pantheist, he does not identify God with the world since there is so much that is evil and unholy in the world.

Modern pantheism recognizes that the concept of "true religions" is problematic at best, and that some religions are counterprogressive and therefore unsuitable for unification with rational worldviews.

Naturalistic or 'scientific' pantheism, which is by far the dominant form of pantheism in existence today and is therefore commonly referred to as 'modern' pantheism, could not be described as 'panentheistic' in any way whatsoever.

The distinction between pantheism and panentheism is an important and useful one, contrary to this editor's POV (read: biased) assertion, and his understanding of that distinction is clearly quite limited to boot.

Pantheism in general is a philosophy as well as a religious affirmation.

At that time, Pantheism (the belief that the universe is the only divine entity) was practiced by schools of philosophers, and thus failed to resemble an organizedreligion.

The word "pantheism" was not coined until the early eighteenth century, but notions of the divine nature of the universe especially flourished in ancient Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu /nrms/SciPanth.html (2544 words)

Pantheism(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-07)

Not all interpretations of pantheism would find these concepts meaningful indeed, not even all pantheists believe in free will.

The viewpoints encompassed within the pantheistic community are necessarily diverse, but the central ideas of the universe being an all-encompassing unity, a common purpose, and the sanctity of both nature and its natural laws are found throughout.

While technically the two are separate, based on a subtlety wherein Pantheism finds God synonymous with nature, and Panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone.

True enough, classical theism denies the possibility of real respects, aspects, or parts in the divine actuality, but this too is merely a dogma, not an established premise for argument.

Classical theism, Aristotelian theism, and classicalpantheism (Stoics, Spinoza), violently oversimplified the issue and only appeared subtle and complicated because of their maze of ambiguities and maneuvers as they tried to hide basic absurdities or contradictions.

There is a special historical reason why classical theism had its long reign and could with impunity enforce its dicta by fire and sword, or instruments of torture.

This work on apologetics examines the classical arguments for the existence of God (ontological and Thomistic arguments), discusses the philosophical issues that confront contemporary apologetics, and provides an incisive critique of presuppositional apologetics.

Classical Apologetics will help the thoughtful Christian understand his or her faith better, and it will provide more solid grounds for sharing this faith with others.

Classical Apologetics is a tough read for someone who is just getting in to apologetics, there are better ones out there to be used as an introduction - for example Scott Oliphant's The Battle Belongs to the Lord, or Greg Bahnsen's Always Ready.

They also include philosophical Taoism, modern Stoicism, Gaian religion, as well as to those forms of wicca and paganism that see magic and the gods as symbols rather than realities, also Western forms of Buddhism that celebrate nature and everyday life, and to those in Unitarian Universalism who do not believe in supernatural beings.

Heraclitus' writings, like those of most pre-Socratics, have survived only in small fragments cited by other classical authors - and in Heraclitus's case they are even smaller and more fragmentary than usual.

SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM is proud to recognize the Greek and Roman materialism of the Miletans, Heraklitus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius as its predecessors.

It is true that Descartes, a classical theist, did unequivocally affirm human freedom, as did Arminius, but neither of them removed the contradiction between this freedom and the timeless perfection of the deity which knows the free act.

This brings out another defect in classical theism, according to which God does not in truth have an endless future, but is strictly timeless, pure actuality, being without becoming.

I think, with Wolfson, that the basic error of classical theism was already there in Philo’s non-dual transcendence, his utterly negative view of God, with the (inconsistent) qualification that Philo did believe in human freedom.

Herein this term includes (but is not necessarily limited to) classical idolatry, pantheism, neo-pantheism, and Eastern faiths (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Yoga, Jainism, Shintoism, as well as numerous forms of occultism).

Gaining prominence in the NAM, refers to the doctrine that imagines the deity as merely an intelligent force or “Natural Law” immanent within nature –not separate from it– that causes everything to exist and function.

Unlike classicalpantheism, this view does not deify the physical world itself, but rather the “Universal Life-force Energy” they imagine animates it.

This lecture was followed by similar lectures and in 1873 they were published as Introduction to the Science of Religion.

The first chapter, Basic Concepts, gives a short introduction to the scientific study of religion by discussing such concepts as religion itself, deism, pantheism, classical theism, and the God of the Bible.

Classical Theism 22, The God of the Bible 25.

www.geocities.com /rpfa/creng.html (561 words)

Urban Pantheism(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-07)

I collected and transplanted some of Riverside Park's native plants that I have enjoyed ever since I was a child: ailanthus, nightshade, pokeweed, lamiastrum, wild violets, sweet woodruff, virginia creepers, hostas, malva sylvestris, and a fabulous grape-leaved vine that produces brilliant turquoise, purple and magenta berries (the rugged Porcelain Berry vine).

The thinker may start from an awareness of the divine reality and then begin to speculate on the relationship of the nondivine to the divine; this position is commonly called acosmic pantheism.

The difficulties of acosmism are visible in his system: tendencies to deny the full reality of the changing finite, to deny the reality of evil, to deny the reality of freedom and chance, and to see individual personality as ultimately unreal.

A view recently termed pantheism has been espoused by some philosophers, including the American Charles Hartshorne, who seek to overcome at once the paradoxes of pantheism and of "classical" theism.